XRP Market Cap Surpassed USDT To Become The 3rd Largest Cryptocurrency

Key Points:

• Ripple’s XRP market cap surged to a seven-year high, surpassing Tether (USDT) with a of over $135 billion, fueled by a strong rally starting November 10.
• Asset managers 21Shares and WisdomTree filed for XRP exchange-traded funds in November, raising expectations for SEC approval under its incoming leadership.

The native token of Ripple, XRP, has seen a historic surge in price to overtake Tether’s USDT and become the third-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization.

Read more: XRP Market Cap Now Surpassed BNB To Become The 5th Largest Coin 

XRP Market Cap Surpasses USDT to Become Third-Largest Cryptocurrency

According to CoinMarketCap, the XRP market cap now extends beyond $135 billion, while USDT has a market capitalization of $134 billion. The latest surge places XRP at its highest level in seven years, having peaked at almost $2.5 on December 2, for a continued uptrend that started on November 10.

The incredible increase follows several years of up-and-down markets. In 2018, XRP was the second-largest cryptocurrency, only behind Bitcoin. Later that year, Ethereum leapfrogged the XRP market cap after the so-called “Hinman speech,” in which SEC officials spoke about Ethereum’s regulatory status.

These discussions, brought to light by the so-called “Hinman emails,” reflected the divided views within the SEC on what the speech meant for other cryptocurrencies. XRP’s recent performance marks a return to prominence after six years. At the time of writing, XRP has been trading nearly $2.4, with an over 25% increase in the last 24 hours.

New XRP ETF Filings Spark Investor Optimism

The recent growth of the XRP market cap is only a part of the rally with which the crypto markets have catapulted higher over the past few weeks. Like most of the leading tokens, many of them can again be found seeing their upward trajectories. However, although Ethereum always trails others in relative importance to Bitcoin, XRP is at least having a great run after being boosted recently, thanks to several positive things that occurred.

An asset manager, 21Shares, filed for the ETF concerning XRP sometime in November. This move raises new hope that the new head of the SEC, who comes on board in January 2025, may approve the applications.

Later in November, alongside WisdomTree, Ripple Labs introduced an innovative tokenized money market fund on the XRP Ledger, created together with UK-based Archax, which is a regulated crypto exchange allowing for trade in cryptocurrencies.